Using intellectual capital to assess educational technology projects: the Proinfo case

Abstract

The intellectual capital theory has been used recently to measure the intangible assets of businesses. However, the intellectual capital can also be used to evaluate the intangible outcomes of social projects and not-for-profit companies, that is, the ones that do not have either a book or a market value. This article presents a heuristic frame to assess the intangible outputs derived from the implementation of information and communication technologies in basic education, so as to measure the human and innovation capitals in this area. Proinfo, a Brazilian program aiming to deploy 100 thousand computers and implement the use of educational technology in the teaching and learning realm in the K-12 Brazilian public schools, is analyzed as a case study, in order to confirm the developed research methodology. Some conclusions are presented so as to better understand the global dynamics of a nationwide educational intervention to use information and communication technologies in the K-12 classrooms, and also be useful to policy-makers as well as researchers in this field. Finally, the paper shows the potentialities of using the intellectual capital theory to evaluate the results of social projects, instead of only for-profit companies.